KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 22 — Global carmaker Stellantis N.V. — with brands such as Citroën, Peugeot and Jeep — announced today that it will establish a new national sales company (NSC) in Malaysia within the first quarter of 2024.

In a statement, the firm also thanked Bermaz Auto Bhd ahead of the end of the partnership with the latter’s subsidiary Bermaz Auto Alliance, which is the current distributor for Peugeot in Malaysia.

"We are excited to announce this new business strategy to serve the Malaysian market with more products and services under the new NSC structure.”

"This includes the future introduction of new brands to Malaysia under the Stellantis portfolio,” Stellantis’ chief operating officer for Asean and general distributors David Gonzalez said.

It said the NSC will be led by Stellantis’ current head of aftersales for Asean and general distributors operations, Jamie Francis Morais.

The statement said that Morais has 19 years of experience in the automotive industry in companies such as Toyota, BMW, Nissan and Proton.

Bermaz Auto executive chairman Tan Sri Ben Yeoh said its company is fully supportive of the global firm’s ambition.

"From the onset of our partnership, we adopted the role of being the custodian of the Peugeot brand in Malaysia, as we are passionate in building brands. Hence, we gladly accepted the challenge in 2020 and together with the Stellantis team, we worked diligently to further develop the brand in Malaysia.

"Today, we are proud to be able to steer it in the direction where Stellantis is ready to take it further,” Yeoh said in the same statement.

Among Stellantis’ new strategies for the Asean region are its ambitions for electrification, the evaluation of its plant in Gurun, Kedah as a regional manufacturing hub for electric vehicle batteries for domestic and export markets and to drive consumer adoption of electric vehicle batteries.

Its regional priorities include a commitment to sustainability under its "Dare Forward 2030” strategy.

Stellantis said it will be investing more than RM2 billion into introducing its STLA Medium platform to the Asean region, which will enable the company to produce multi-energy vehicles and local manufacture of cars from its house of brands.